Social Vision: Applying a Social-Functional Approach to Face and Expression Perception

Abstract

A social-functional approach to face processing comes with a number of assumptions. First, given that humans possess limited cognitive resources, it assumes that we naturally allocate attention to processing and integrating the most adaptively relevant social cues. Second, from these cues, we make behavioral forecasts about others in order to respond in an efficient and adaptive manner. This assumption aligns with broader ecological accounts of vision that highlight a direct action-perception link, even for nonsocial vision. Third, humans are naturally predisposed to process faces in this functionally adaptive manner. This latter contention is implied by our attraction to dynamic aspects of the face, including looking behavior and facial expressions, from which we tend to overgeneralize inferences, even when forming impressions of stable traits. The functional approach helps to address how and why observers are able to integrate functionally related compound social cues in a manner that is ecologically relevant and thus adaptive.

Temporal Dynamics of the Neural Representation of Social Relationships

“…This strengthens evidence from previous studies that show spontaneous neural coding of network characteristics within participants' own social networks (Parkinson et al, 2017). The social functional theory of face processing posits that attention is naturally allocated to the most relevant cues, which in the case of the human perceptual system, includes social information (Adams et al, 2017). This would suggest the possibility that our participants were either implicitly or explicitly thinking about these relationships without us directing them to do so.…”

When a face type is perceived as threatening: Using general recognition theory to understand biased categorization of Afrocentric faces

“…It is important to point out that face processing also includes assessing relevant social cues as a means of making behavioral forecasts about others in order to respond appropriately while using few cognitive resources (Adams, Albohn, & Kveraga, 2017). Attunement to facial cues are of such primary importance that people often make assumptions about personality or other traits based on transient expressions (Knutson, 1996).…”

Social Cognition through the Lens of Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience

“…The prototypical example, in this respect, is represented by the neural processing of human faces [ 21 ], providing multifaceted information on both others' changeable characteristics such as emotions and intentions, and invariant features such as identity. The unique salience of human faces [ 22 ] is indeed considered to reflect their predictive power with respect to others' intentions and thus their potential consequence in social terms [ 23 ]. In line with this view, different experimental paradigms suggest that faces and objects undergo different styles of cognitive processing, i.e., holistic vs. part-based coding, respectively, with parts being integrated into a whole in upright but not inverted faces [ 24 ].…”